1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to automated financial services. Specifically, the invention relates to automated payroll vendor services for processing automated clearinghouse (ACH) transactions and handling payroll transactions and funds.
2. Background
Automated payroll services systems are provided to end users (e.g., businesses and similar organizations) via a vendor (e.g., a business that sells automated payroll services). The end user and/or vendor of automated payroll service systems must interact with and use multiple service providers in order to carry out financial transactions related to payroll processing including tax payment processing, trust fund processing, investment of funds, and similar financial transactions. The vendor and/or end users must additionally bear the liability for ACH transactions for their clients which incur non-sufficient funds (NSF) returns.
The need to interact with multiple “outside” service providers to carry out payroll management places a burden on vendors and/or end users of payroll service systems to produce the varied financial data required by these “outside” financial service providers. Each service provider (i.e., trust fund management provider, tax payment processor and similar service providers) has independent systems to implement its services. These independent systems each require a set of relevant financial data from the end user or vendor. This results in a duplicity of effort because end users and vendors must prepare the required data for each provider. This data varies but includes overlapping content between the service providers. This results in inefficiency with the end user and/or vendors and causes corporate control concerns for the end user and/or vendors by complicating the handling of payroll processing and similar financial transactions.